I use Google Picasa - and have used it for many years - and use the facial recognition and Google Data for online synchronization/backup (Picasa automatically backs up and uploads any changes in the background). I tag all my files with keywords and group them into virtual albums. All my files are on my C: drive and in a directory C:/Pictures/YYYYMM/YYYYMMDD/... As I have many photo sources I manually copy all my images into those directories by date. I use picasa to create virtual albums and use picasas search capabilities along with its editing (picasa preserves the original) although I use Photoshop to do any major editing and a panoramic program to make large panoramic images.

I back all my files up locally and rotate that drive with another drive when I visit relative in another town (legacy from before the "cloud", but I still do it). All in all it's 500gb with video's and 80,000+ files.

I also back up all our Smart Phones - 8 with extended family - as I can to keep backups from those sources.

One nice thing is that I can use an app on my Iphone to access all my photos and search by keyword, person, date or album and bringing up freinds pics, vacation pics or anyting on the fly.

I am concerned about the life of picasa, but it works well for me now...

Just beware of one of those photo-sharing sites eventually catching "WebShots disease" (now is named Smile).

In that case, you had to scramble during their post-acquisition "transition-period" to download all your pix (if not locally saved), after which you either had to start paying based on storage or else you lost everything.

Isn't it possible that e.g. Flickr might be acquired and/or change policy in the future? (perhaps while you are unaware until too late)

I have tens of thousands of digital photos, including scans of shoeboxes full of prints from the old film days. I have at least one local backup of all of them, on a NAS box, and a second backup of the most important ones in the cloud.

I very rarely ever print hardcopies, but when I do, I find that an inkjet printer and good photo paper meet my needs. Photos are usually viewed on a computer monitor or tablet, but can easily be viewed on the HDTV if desired, although we rarely do that.

For organizing, I still use Picasa. I'm sure there are better tools out there, but I'm accustomed to Picasa, the price is right (free), and I like the facial recognition feature. It is surprisingly good, and at times when I want to look at something other than my most recent photos, it's nice to be able to create an album containing just photos in which certain people appear.

I am also one of those who gets concerned when I read about the decline in digital still camera popularity. I have taken many great photos with my iPhone, but their quality doesn't compare with what my "real" camera can do.

Yes, but in today's developing world I have seen youngsters not bothering about the rights of their pictures. Many of them does not even know about this kind of issues of rights. I have seen many teen putting their all the pictures on FB or G+, if the limit overshoots they open a new account and starting posting there. They really also do not bother about multiple identities, and even though they change identities they effectively collaborate in their groups of friends. Yup they also forget the old account after they have started using new one. Strange but it is true.

Only a few days back I spent almost 2-3 hours for selecting/sorting from a pile of pictures, some were taken by me in my childhood, some were related to sweet memories. It was tough!! All were printed...some have gone bad. But in that 2-3 hours time, may be, I could check only 1% of all pix I have taken so far!! I might have lost some of the very important pictures...as I even don't know where they are. Very nice topic and so much of learning from this article and comments so far!!

Personally I would like to take prints...but it takes money, space and time for maintenance!! Hence only a few important ones get printed now a days. Others are dumped into a hard drive specifically for storing photos and videos...but the problem there is the photos can't be shared so easily. I tried Picasa...it was good except the time taken in sorting and uploading reamained manual. Now a days I spend a quick moment after taking a picture for thinking whether I want to retain it or delete it...and then keep or delete...this practice has reduced the number of pix taken. :)

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